Hutt County
Hutt County was one of the former counties of New Zealand. It occupied the south-western corner of the North Island, extending south from the Waikanae River and lying to the west of the summits of the Rimutaka Ranges. The county's name arises from the fact that a large amount of its land area lies in the Hutt River catchment, its major waterway) surrounding the cities of Wellington and Lower Hutt. The county initially had 8 ridings : Belmont, Epuni, Horokiwi, Makara, Mungaroa, Porirua, Wainui-o-mata and Whareroa.Hutt County Council The Cyclopedia of New Zealand Provincial District, The Cyclopedia Company, Limited, 1897, Wellington. Retrieved from The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre on 24 January 2011. By 1895, each riding elected one councillor, except Porirua, which elected two, to the Hutt County Council. One of the elected councillors was appointed as chairman of the Council. For more detail, see the /historical detail/ subpage. Hutt County was administered by the Hutt County Council, which was first established in 1876, but it was eventually dissolved in 1989 when local government was reformed and the few remaining constituent ridings were amalgamated into adjacent cities. Between 1908 and 1962 the Makara Riding was separately administered as Makara County. During its time, several towns, boroughs, districts, and eventually cities developed within the county. While the town of Wellington was already a separately incorporated local body at the time the county was established, its jurisdiction did not then extend beyond the town belt on the hills around Lambton Harbour. The boroughs of Melrose, Onslow, Karori, Miramar, Johnsonville and Tawa Flat initially developed in parts of Hutt County just outside Wellington. Various partly urbanised portions of it were transferred at times to adjoining cities, including the newer cities of Porirua and Upper Hutt in 1973. Part of the process included the creation of Makara County in the south-west in about 1961 when Porirua was created as a borough (cutting the Makara ward off from the rest of the county), Kapiti Coast District in the north not long after 1973, and Wainuiomata District in the east in 1988. It was finally abolished in 1989 when all of its remaining areas and the fairly new Wainuiomata District were merged with adjoining cities. In the Hutt Valley towns developed into boroughs at Eastbourne, Petone, Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt, with the latter two eventually becoming cities. As these urban areas developed and grew, the urbanised areas of Hutt County were incorporated into these cities and boroughs. Despite this, significant communities also developed in Stokes Valley north-east of Lower Hutt, the Wainuiomata valley east of Lower hutt, and Heretaunga–Pinehaven in the southern part of the Upper Hutt basin. Small coastal communities on the Kapiti Coast were established early on, though major development around Paraparaumu and Waikanae was not significant until the 1970s and 1980s after land closer to Wellington had been developed. By 1989, Hutt County had become so fragmented that the only reasonable reform (as part of the abolition of all mainland counties) was to incorporate the various remaining communities into adjoining cities. Notes See also * List of former territorial authorities in New Zealand#Counties * List of counties of New Zealand * List of counties of New Zealand (1966) Category:Hutt County Category:Counties of New Zealand Category:Politics of the Wellington Region